


get your act together we could be just fine

by anxiousAnarchist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 20:59:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5020330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anxiousAnarchist/pseuds/anxiousAnarchist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tonks and Fleur keep getting assigned to do undercover work. Together. In muggle London. </p>
<p>It’s starting to become a problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	get your act together we could be just fine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [montparnasse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/montparnasse/gifts).



The problem is, you’re deadly together. 

You have a vicious right hook, and you’ve never seen anyone kick quite like Fleur. She says the heels help, but you think mostly she likes how her legs look in them. 

Okay, okay -- you like how her legs look in them too. 

The problem is, you’re deadly together, and her legs look great all the time, and you _hate her._

* * *

“ _Another_ undercover job?” you say. 

Mad Eye Moody glowers. The man has two expressions: “glower” and “terrify.” “Glower” means maybe he’s feeling particularly lenient today. 

“You and Delacour show a certain aptitude for it. So get used to it.” 

“How am I supposed to go undercover when so few people forget my face after seeing it?” asks Fleur. 

You roll your eyes. They both pretend not to notice. 

“Just charm them into thinking they’re wrong. It’s not my damn responsibility, figure it out.” 

“Just charm them into -- that is ridiculous!” 

“Wear a wig, then.”

“Incredible,” she mutters.

* * *

She manages to pull it off, though. Fleur never wears a wig, but she tilts her head and smiles and says “oh, I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about!” and touches whoever asks “have I seen you before?” on the arm and they forget to ask again.

“It is not charming them out of it,” she says to you one afternoon. “I cannot make anyone just, just, poof, disregard any concerns they have. It takes effort, you can understand that, surely.” 

Fleur says it like she doesn’t have you grow a foot to get something off the top shelf for her, but you think you understand a little anyway.

* * *

The problem is, you’re deadly together, and her legs look great all the time, and she can’t work a washing machine to save her life, and you _don’t_ hate her.

* * *

The Order job’s supposed to be easy (usually the undercover jobs are easy, in a way, in the sense that you are so very good at inhabiting a different face), and it is, in a technical sense, but it’s a little bit of a strain in -- in other ways. Posing as muggles isn’t too hard for you, but Fleur Delacour, pureblood except for all the ways she isn’t, can’t seem to get the hang of it. 

The whole “pureblood doesn’t get muggle technology” thing starts to get old after about thirty minutes. You guess after a lifetime of dealing with people cloistered in wizarding society you should be used to the poking-at-toasters-inquisitively deal, but --- 

“Here, no, this is how you change the channel.”

“Oh, my hero! Thank you so much, I’ve been stuck watching this dreadful program for the last hour or two.” 

And you can’t help but feel a little pleased when she calls you “my hero” and smiles at you, her legs tucked under her while she sits on the ratty couch totally incongruous with all that is Fleur Delacour.

* * *

For every job that ends in spectacle and property damage and Death Eaters fleeing the scene there’s two or three that drag on listlessly for two days, three days, a week, longer. You will, it seems, be spending the majority of the war watching muggles from shrubs, tailing purebloods poorly disguised as muggles, and making tea in cramped kitchens while a rude Frenchwoman warbles Spice Girls songs at your elbow. 

Muggle radio was an absolute mistake. You should have never introduced her to it. Your life is all about changing the contours of your body and top forty hits and that is it.

* * *

Actually, that’s the thing that really gets you, about Fleur, at first. She’s rude -- not a little rude, but really fucking rude. You at holiday dinner rude, you during your Rebellious Phase in fourth year rude. You don’t know how many people would hang around her if it weren’t for her otherworldly charm, and even then it can drive people away. You’re not used to being the polite one, the one who cringes and says “it’s fine, really,” when someone insults the decorations at a party, the one who grimaces at the other people in the conversation in silent sympathy, you’re not used to being the reasonable polite one. You love it. It’s beautiful. She’s not cruel about it, she just does not care about so many different people’s opinions, and it’s a glorious thing to behold. 

During the holidays, before Hogwarts goes on break, you and the other Order members currently in the country and not undercover have a celebration at Grimmauld Place, a thank-God-we’re-not-dead party, and Fleur purses her lips and offers up criticisms for free the second Great Auntie Walburga opens her mouth to insult you and doesn’t stop for three hours. 

Sirius loves its, keeps offering to show her new rooms to critique, giving you thumbs up behind Fleur’s back. You don’t know why. It’s good, though, watching the two of them wander around the physical representation of The Noble And Ancient House Of Black criticizing the tapestries. Sirius speaks French with an atrocious accent (Fleur tells you) on purpose (Remus tells you) but Fleur seems to appreciate the effort anyway. 

At some point she gets into an argument with Hestia Jone about the ostentatiousness of the chandelier in the drawing room, and Hestia makes a rather rude comment about the ostentatiousness of Fleur’s boots (Fleur loves those boots, you think to yourself, bought as a present to herself after your first successful Order mission together from a muggle shop down the road, too high and too loud but she assures you incredibly comfortable), and Fleur storms off. 

“I think you’d best go chase after your young woman,” says Remus, who’d been watching the whole affair with an air of faint amusement. 

“She’s not my young woman, why do you always talk like someone’s grandfather?”

“Mmm,” he says, in that infuriating way he has of mmm and hmmm-ing. Like he knows something you don’t know. And then, “I don’t talk like anyone’s grandfather.”

“Yes, you do,” you say. You shift your appearance to his, and mimic his voice. “You’d best go chase after your young woman, young lady.”

Sirius walks into the room, and laughs. “Tonks, this is why you’re my favorite.” 

“I thought I was your favorite,” says Remus. 

“No, absolutely not, you always tell me to get a haircut and then steal all my chocolate.” 

You don’t go looking for Fleur. The next day, you’re sent to spy on the teacher at a fancy muggle primary school, and Fleur doesn’t take the boots along.

* * *

The problem is, you’re starting to get used to her. To the terrible singing voice, to her fancy underwear hanging up in the bathroom to dry. You’re getting used to having to bat away bras to get to the sink to brush your teeth, and you’re getting used to the sleepy way she grumbles after a stakeout. She kisses your cheek after you show her how to use the oven, and when the heater breaks she drags every blanket in the apartment to your room and crawls in next to you.

* * *

_Is it a veela thing?_ you ask Sirius, in one of your frequent owls to him. _Is it just a veela thing, maybe? What do I do if it is?_

_I think the more interesting question is what do you do if it isn’t,_ he says. _Besides, you’ve been around her enough when she does the veela thing, you can probably tell the difference._

You have, and you can.

* * *

In the end, it’s a little anticlimactic. You’re doing dishes, and she’s singing, and you tell her her singing voice is horrible, and she says “I think you like it, just a little, no?” 

“No,” you say. “It’s terrible.” 

She laughs, and for all that her singing voice is awful her laugh is musical. Fleur’s drying dishes at your side, but she nudges your arm and turns so you’re both facing each other. “You think I don’t notice when a pretty girl looks at me?” 

“Oh,” you say, and _steady on, Tonks_ you think, and kiss her. It’s not your best work, but she sighs happily anyway. She’s taller than you this week, so she leans down into you, tugging at your too-short hair, kisses you as sweet as she is sharp. 

And then she keeps singing.

* * *

The problem is, there’s not much of a problem at all. Maybe there should be, maybe -- you think sometimes -- we’re playing a game we can’t possibly win. But you work together and you live together (in muggle apartments, in Order safehouses, in your own long-neglected flat in wizarding London, in tents and with intent to stay in a cottage somewhere by the sea), you change shapes and Fleur changes minds and she’s there, every day, gruff or sleepy or angry or laughing, impeccably dressed always, nose up and head high. You work, and you _work._ And it’s good. 


End file.
